Saturday, December 3

We were too late. We were always too late. It was as if the universe dangled hope in front of our faces, only to cruelly snatch it away at the last moment. Guillemet had found the Surgeon and the Surgeon had found him and then trapped him in a neverending loop, where his only escape was erasure. If AIs could die, he would be dead.

Another friend dead. No time to mourn.

We had the location of the Surgeon. We found her alone, sitting on a chair, waiting for us.

She was a woman with dark chestnut hair and deep red lipstick. I gathered that she had a history with Omega. Omega certainly looked at her with deep anger.

"You can't stop it," the Surgeon said. "He is returning. The church was a joke. It didn't want Him back. It only wanted to use His name. I am bringing Him back."

"You are insane," Omega said.

"Perhaps," the Surgeon said. "But He has been asleep for far too long. The world is sick, you know it. The world is sick and He is the cure."

"Why hire the Golconda?" I asked. "Why try to kill us?"

She shrugged. "Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?" she said. "Aren't I the villain?"

She was insane. She thought this was all a story.

"What have you done with everything that was in the Archive?" I asked.

The Surgeon smiled, her lips the color of red roses. "They are in a packet," she said. "A single packet of information. It's being distributed into each cloudsite as we speak. A single packet that will unload and unleash everything He has done in a single stream of information. Everyone will see this and then they will see Him." She leaned forward. "It will be better than the old days. In the old days, only a select few could see Him. Very soon, everyone will see Him. Everyone."

Omega placed her blade beneath the Surgeon's neck. "How do we stop it?" she asked.

"You can't," the Surgeon said again. "It's already done. He is returning."

I sat down. "I don't understand," I said.

"He is-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get that part," I interrupted her. "You want him to return and cleanse the world, blah blah blah. Arkos wanted to keep it safe, you want to use it so that everyone gets infected. But you said he's been 'sleeping' for too long. That no one's seen him. Right?"

The Surgeon, confused at my question, simply nodded.

"I've seen him," I said. "He saved my life now, on two occasions. Why is that?"

"That's..." The Surgeon started to talk and stopped. "That's impossible. You're lying."

"Why?" Omega asked. "Why would she lie?"

"He's been sleeping," the Surgeon said. "No one has seen Him. You are lying."

"You don't know, do you?" I said. "For all your talk about him returning, you have no idea what he really is. You don't know if he's going to 'cleanse' the world or if anything will even happen when the packet opens. You don't know anything."

"I know you're all going to die," she spat.

"I knew that," I said. "Everyone dies sooner or later." I stood up. "Personally, however, I would prefer later rather than sooner. I'm going to leave this room now. I'm going to leave you here with Omega. I assume she has things that she wants to do to you and I would prefer not to see them. Bye."